Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

Quick and Easy Sign Up!

It takes less then 1 minute to sign up, then you can enjoy Unlimited eBooks.

Sign Up Browse

Popular Genres

Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

  • Download on iOS
  • Download on Android
  • Download on iOS

Kept from All Contagion: Germ Theory, Disease, and the Dilemma of Human Contact in Late Nineteenth-Century Literature

Kept from All Contagion: Germ Theory, Disease, and the Dilemma of Human Contact in Late Nineteenth-Century Literature

Kari Nixon
0/5 ( ratings)
Read Download
Kept from All Contagion explores the surprising social effects of germ theory in the late nineteenth century. Connecting groups of authors rarely studied in tandem by highlighting their shared interest in changing interpersonal relationships in the wake of germ theory, this book takes a surprising and refreshing stance on studies in medicine and literature.

Each chapter focuses on a different disease, discussing the different social policies or dilemmas that arose from new understandings in the 1860s-1890s that these diseases were contagious. The chapters pair these sociohistorical considerations with robust literary analyses that assess the ways authors as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Henrik Ibsen, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, among others, grappled with these ideas and their various impacts upon different human relationships-marital, filial, and social.

Through the trifocal structure of each chapter , the book excavates previously overlooked connections between literary texts that insist upon the life-giving importance of community engagement-the very thing that seemed threatening in the wake of germ theory's revelations. Germ theory seemed to promote self-protection via isolation; the authors covered in Kept from All Contagion resist such tacit biopolitical implications. Instead, as Kari Nixon shows, they repeatedly demonstrate vitalizing interpersonal interactions in spite of-and often because of-their contamination with disease, thus completely upending both the ways Victorians and present-day literary scholars have tended to portray and interpret purity.
Pages
274
Format
Paperback
Publisher
State University of New York Press
Release
January 02, 2021
ISBN
1438478488
ISBN 13
9781438478487

Kept from All Contagion: Germ Theory, Disease, and the Dilemma of Human Contact in Late Nineteenth-Century Literature

Kari Nixon
0/5 ( ratings)
Read Download
Kept from All Contagion explores the surprising social effects of germ theory in the late nineteenth century. Connecting groups of authors rarely studied in tandem by highlighting their shared interest in changing interpersonal relationships in the wake of germ theory, this book takes a surprising and refreshing stance on studies in medicine and literature.

Each chapter focuses on a different disease, discussing the different social policies or dilemmas that arose from new understandings in the 1860s-1890s that these diseases were contagious. The chapters pair these sociohistorical considerations with robust literary analyses that assess the ways authors as diverse as Thomas Hardy, Henrik Ibsen, and Mary Elizabeth Braddon, among others, grappled with these ideas and their various impacts upon different human relationships-marital, filial, and social.

Through the trifocal structure of each chapter , the book excavates previously overlooked connections between literary texts that insist upon the life-giving importance of community engagement-the very thing that seemed threatening in the wake of germ theory's revelations. Germ theory seemed to promote self-protection via isolation; the authors covered in Kept from All Contagion resist such tacit biopolitical implications. Instead, as Kari Nixon shows, they repeatedly demonstrate vitalizing interpersonal interactions in spite of-and often because of-their contamination with disease, thus completely upending both the ways Victorians and present-day literary scholars have tended to portray and interpret purity.
Pages
274
Format
Paperback
Publisher
State University of New York Press
Release
January 02, 2021
ISBN
1438478488
ISBN 13
9781438478487

More books from Kari Nixon

Quarantine Life from Cholera to COVID-19: What Pandemics Teach Us About Parenting, Work, Life, and Communities from the 1700s to Today

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Endemic: Essays in Contagion Theory

4/5 ( ratings)

Syphilis and Subjectivity : From the Victorians to the Present

4/5 ( ratings)

Optimal Motherhood and Other Lies Facebook Told Us: Assembling the Networked Ethos of Contemporary Maternity Advice

4/5 ( ratings)

Kept from All Contagion: Germ Theory, Disease, and the Dilemma of Human Contact in Late Nineteenth-Century Literature

4/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?

loader